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Sunday, July 22, 2012

Tiong Bahru Bakery

I must say that this is one of my favourite bakeries as of the current moment. I've visited it once for dine in, and a second time for take away.

Tiong Bahru Bakery

Tiong Bahru Bakery by Gontran Cherrier is an artisan bakery opened by French baker Gontran Cherrier. I must admit that when the hype was going on about this new bakery in town, I was keen to check it out, but was blindly oblivious to the fact who Gontran Cherrier is. Ha!

Well, I'm still not sure who he is, but I certainly know his breads and pastries.

I especially love his brioches. I've tried the plain and chocolate ones, and duh, I definitely recommend the chocolate one. What? It's studded with chocolate chips.

The chocolate brioches are quite buttery, and taste quite good on its own, whereas for the plain one, you might have to spread some more butter (my gosh, as if that's already not enough butter in there...) and some jam to go along with it. As I tried the plain one in store, I liked how they had little pots of butter and jams at the side, where they put the water jugs out, so customers can help themselves to them if they want.

Their coffee's from 40Hands, which I've yet to visit. In fact, on my first visit there, one of my girlfriends pointed out that the barista from 40Hands was there. Once again, my oblivious-ness. ;) Cuppa's quite good I guess, but I was not paying much attention to it, it was just the side kick to my breakfast spread.

It was good that I had my group of girlfriends along, that means we get to order a variety and share. We got the plain brioche, a plain croissant, a chocolate croissant, a guacamole sandwich bun with lots of salad in it, and a squid ink sandwich bun with smoked salmon.

I liked the squik ink sandwich bun. The bread had a special salty note to it, and my first thought was immediately - interesting. The bread itself was soft and fluffy, and when paired with the smoked salmon, made for a very nice sandwich indeed.

I didn't quite like the guacamole bun however. I didn't taste the guacamole flavour in it, and there were just too much rocket leaves stuffed in it. I'm okay with rocket ,but my girlfriends were not big fans of it, thus there were plenty of leaves leftover on the plate (even after we've already eaten quite a lot of it).

I'm not a fan of the croissant either. I mean, it's okay good, but I don't get the rave reviews most people are giving it. I for one, like my croissants the traditional way - buttery and tons of flaky layers. The croissants at Tiong Bahru Bakery were quite different from the regular ones I've had. The layers are not flaky flaky, you could actually peel off the layers one by one, if you get what I mean. It's okay I guess, not one of the worst I've had, nor one of the best I've had.

One of our girlfriends was late, so when she came, she ordered the focaccia and the grapefruit and orange frangipane tart.

I must say these two were actual disappointments. The focaccia bread was rock hard, and it was just so tough to try to slice through it. And the tart flavours sound good, but I didn't really like the taste of it together. The tart shell was good though.

It may seem like there's quite a lot of misses so far, but really, how can I ignore the brioches? There are simply yummy. The croissants too, are passable.

Oh, and I also bought the berry crumble slice as takeaway. It was delicious. I toasted it again before I had it (I had refrigerate it overnight). I loved the flavours. The slightly tart berries, coupled with the slighty sweet crumble, were absolutely brilliant. I liked how the slice was quite huge (well, it better be for the price I'm paying) and it was really thin (just like a thin crust pizza!) so you won't get too sick of it.

I also bought the almond croissant thing below as takeaway, it was not bad too.

Another of my girlfriend recommends the Kouign Aman. I'll have to try it someday to see whether it's any good!

Oh, and i just downloaded a few (okay, quite alot) of presets for Lightroom. It's been fun playing around with them instead of using the preloaded presets for Lightroom. Can't wait to find more to play around with!

thanks. yeps, i post processed photos in lightroom. im sorry but i don rmb where i dl the presets from cos i renamed my presets before saving. you can perhaps google for lightroom presets - there's loads of free ones on the net! :)